Your Right to Know

By Jodi Rudoren &Michael R. GordonTHE NEW YORK TIMES • Wednesday April 2, 2014 6:33 AM

JERUSALEM — The Mideast peace talks were thrown into confusion yesterday as a meeting between
Secretary of State John Kerry and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority was canceled
after Abbas moved to join 15 international agencies, a move vigorously opposed by Israel and the
United States.

Abbas, who has been under pressure from other Palestinian leaders and the public to press his
case for statehood through U.N. agencies, said yesterday that he was taking that course because
Israel had failed to release a fourth batch of long-serving Palestinian prisoners by the end of
March, as promised when the talks started last summer.

“We do not want to use this right against anybody or confront anybody,” Abbas said as he signed
the papers, in a speech broadcast live on Palestinian television.

“We don’t want to collide with the U.S. administration. We want a good relationship with
Washington because it helped us and exerted huge efforts. But because we did not find ways for
solution, this becomes our right.”

Israel and the United States have argued that Palestinian membership in these international
agencies is a mistaken approach to Palestinian statehood, which should instead be negotiated
directly between Israel and the Palestinians.

Congress passed a law saying such membership could trigger a withdrawal of U.S. financial aid to
the Palestinian Authority and other steps.

It was unclear whether Kerry or Abbas — or both — had canceled the meeting. Nor was it clear
what the cancellation might mean for the peace talks, but Kerry insisted at a news conference in
Brussels that the peace process was not dead.